The Corporate Afterlife

Maya had been **swimming** through spreadsheets for fourteen hours when her phone buzzed. Another notification from the wellness group chat. 'Remember your **Vitamin** D supplements, ladies! Sunlight in a pill!'

She stared at her reflection in the office window—ghostly pale against the midnight skyline. A **zombie** in a designer blazer, that's what she'd become. The corporate **pyramid** scheme she'd fallen into two years ago promised financial freedom. Instead, it delivered this: recruiting other exhausted women into the same maze, each one climbing over the others to reach the golden apex that didn't exist.

Her fiancé David had left three months ago. Said he couldn't watch her disappear into something that wasn't there. 'You're drowning, Maya,' he'd said, and the worst part was he was right.

She filled a glass with **water** from the cooler, watching her hand tremble. The building's gym was still open. The pool would be empty.

The water was cold, shocking her back into her body. She floated on her back, staring at the fluorescent ceiling that looked like stars seen through wrong eyes. Something cracked open inside her—grief, maybe, or just the accumulated weight of all those lies she'd told herself about success and empowerment and sisterhood.

By dawn, she'd drafted her resignation email. No more vitamins, no more pyramids, no more pretending the dead thing she was selling could ever come alive. She stepped outside into real sunlight, and for the first time in years, she didn't feel like she was underwater at all.